Justices of the Supreme Court of the United States. In a 5-3 ruling, the court reversed an appeals court decision which declared the military tribunals legal. Chief Justice Roberts, center front, recused himself
after having ruled in the government's favor before joining the Supreme Court. (above).

In a 180 degree turnaround, the Pentagon
extends the Geneva Conventions to "enemy combatants."

After four years of stubbornness, Washington is lowering its
guard: the deputy secretary of defense, Gordon England, on Friday sent a note
to military leaders telling them that all prisoners detained in American Army
jails throughout the world benefit from the protection of the Geneva Conventions.
This simple phrase radically changes the status of "enemy combatants"
imprisoned at Guantanamo, in Afghanistan and in Iraq. The secret CIA prisons,
however, remain out of bounds.

By confirming the Financial Times'
scoop yesterday, White House press secretary Tony Snow tried to minimize its
scope ."It's not
really a reversal of policy," he said, explaining that the
detainees were already treated humanely and that this obligation already
existed in military instruction manuals. But "we want to get it right," he said after the Supreme Court decision
at the end of June that declared the exceptional trials at Guantanamo illegal.

Article 3 of the 1949 conventions stipulates that the prisoners
captured on the field of battle must be humanely treated and must benefit from
a fair trial before a "regularly constituted court affording all the
judicial guarantees."

From the time that the "prison for terrorists" on the
American enclave in Cuba opened in 2002, George W. Bush has proclaimed that the
"global war on terror" involved "a new concept requiring a new
law of war." He was in breach by depriving the "illegal combatants"
of the protection of international treaties, ordering only that they be "treated
humanely in a manner that complies with the principles of the Geneva Conventions,
within the limits of military necessity."The Pentagon then
authorized coercive interrogation techniques, before the embarrassment of Abu
Ghraib in Iraq and the international pressure on Guantanamo officially put an
end to it.

A New Law Could Be Debated

On June 29, the United States Supreme Court imposed legal
constraints on the president. It ruled that he overstepped his powers by
creating "military tribunals" without the approval of Congress and
that the rules of these tribunals violated national and international law.
These ad hoc tribunals can deliver the death penalty, exclude the protection of
the prisoner's confidentiality or hold against him information obtained under
torture. Congress yesterday embarked on a series of hearings to look at how to
respond to the Court's complaints. A new law could be debated. But the Court's decision
announced yesterday, even as a "preventive" measure, indicates that
there has been a return to international legality.